The Greatest Hockey Stories Ever Told: The Finest Writers on Ice

by Bryant Urstadt (Editor)

Here are writers such as Rick Carpiniello on Mark Messier and his finest game ever, the crucial turning point of the Devils-Rangers series on the Rangers' road to the Stanley Cup; Dave Bidini on longsuffering hockey fanatics in deepest Romania, waiting desperately for their chance on the international stage; Ken Dryden, from his classic The Game, on the spirit of the dominating Montreal Canadians of the seventies; ESPN magazine's Gare Joyce on Patrick Sullivan, the 2004 draftee whose biggest challenge isn't making the NHL, but handling his father; John Stackhouse on triumph and tragedy on a Native American rink in northern Canada. No anthology would be complete without work from the likes .

George Plimpton on his stint in goal with the Bruins . Guy Lawson on the tough lives of junior players . Dave "The Hammer" Schultz on the Broad Street Bullies . Brian Fawcett on poetry in the locker room . Don Cherry on "The Siberia of Hockey" . Hugh Hood on Jean Beliveau . Jeff Greenfield on the Rangers . Martin O'Malley on the hard life of a fighter . Jack Falla on building a backyard rink . Peter Gzowski on Wayne Gretzky . and more

The only thing more hard-core than most hockey players are the fans themselves, and this is their book.

Genres: Hockey, Sports, Nonfiction, Anthologies

269 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2004

Reviews

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love hockey and over the years have read Awesome books on the game, players and the evolution of the NHL. This is a collection of stories and authors. Some are great, others are ok. Not really the greatest stories ever told. The chapter on the US Olympic team was ok, but I have read many more interesting and insightful articles

Good to read a chapter here or there, but not a must read

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

More 1.5 than 2, honestly.

[J.C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars. There are not a lot popular books on hockey that make the rounds in the used bookstores of America (as opposed to books on baseball and football which clog up any sports shelf in any bookstore in the U.S.) so it was nice to find this collection. Most of the stuff in this non-fiction anthology consist of articles from various Canadian newspapers and magazines, but there were a few book excerpts that were very entertaining and has made me want to seek out those titles someday and give them a read.

There was a great profile of the 1980 Olympic team that first appeared in Sports Illustrated. George Plimpton's book excerpt from "Open Net" where he describes his five minutes tending goal for the Boston Bruins was very entertaining. Dave Bidini's book "Tropic of Hockey" where the author seeks out the game in places where one wouldn't expect to find the game has made it on to my "To Read" shelf as has "The Game of Our Lives" by Peter Gzowski, which is a year long profile of an Edmonton Oilers team from 1980-81, which was a team on the cusp of hockey immortality.

There are a number of other selections that I would have mentioned but I don't have the book in front of me as I write this and would hate to reference something incorrectly.

An overall great collection of hockey stories. Made me want to watch Slap Shot again (an excerpt of that screenplay was included as well).

[Reuben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Give this one four stars if you're not a hockey fan. The essays were thoroughly enjoyable and well written. They covered a range of topics, including the life of junior players in northern Manitoba, Mike Richter, Wayne Gretzky and how to build your own rink. A must read for fans of the game.

Random quote from Facing the Shooter by Alec Wilkinson :

"It has always been a commonplace in hockey that a singular type of person is drawn to occupying the goal. Goalies have traditionally been thought of as men who nurse grievances, cherish slights, startle easily, brood and suffer nervous complaints. The annals of hockey include at least one goalie who became nauseated and threw up before games. On occasion, he would leave the ice to be sick, then return to the net. Sometimes, asleep on an airplane, he would suddenly kick on foot to the side, as if he were stopping a puck. Ulcers and insomnia have been prominent among goalies. A goalie named Wilf Cude was habitually so tense on days when he was to play that once, at lunch, he threw a steak at his wife, because she asked how a particular goal had got past him. The steak hit the wall behind her, and before it reached the floor he had decided to retire."

[Joyce]

It's a truism that hockey does not attract great writers the way baseball and boxing are said to do; and if these are in fact the greatest hockey essays of all time I'd have to concur. Nothing here comes close to matching the pipe-organ majesty of, say, Roger Angell's "The Web of the Game" or the Mozartian wit of AJ Liebling's _The Sweet Science_. At best it seems like hockey writing is more of a solo acoustic guitar: close to the ice, highly specific vignettes of how the sausage is ground in (mostly) small (mostly) Canadian towns.

My favorite pieces were Alec Wilkinson's 1992 profile of the young Rangers goalie Mike Richter; and Hugh Hood's account of an afternoon skating with Habs legend Jean Beliveau. Both are filled with details that will be delicious to a hockey fan -- the pleasure Beliveau takes in skating, Richter's meticulous account of facing a Rob Brind'Amour breakaway -- and probably quite tedious to a non-fan. I'm guessing that non-fans will enjoy the more sociological essays here, which are largely about the world of hockey fandom in places as diverse as Manitoba, New York City, Texas, and Romania.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of sixteen different pieces about ice hockey.

It runs the gamut from Jack Falla's lyric description of how to build your own rink, to an excerpt from the movie "Slapshot"; from the rough and profane antics of Ranger fans, to the 1980 Lake Placid Miracle in which the U.S. Men's Olympic hockey team beat the Soviets; from a careful retelling of how goalie Mike Richter and shooter Rod Brind'Amour view a save Richter made on a Brind'Amour breakaway, to an account of "The Healing Power of Hockey" in which the Opaskwayak Cree Nation Blizzard hockey team brings together two adjacent but racially segregated communities in Manitoba.

This book fed my interest in ice hockey and in sport as a social, expressive, often political phenomenon. It also led me in a number of other directions, so my thanks to the editor for that!

[Lauren1012 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this one. The editor did a good job of including writing from lots of different angles on the sport. Tall order, considering the lack of decent hockey writing out there. Good job.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an enjoyable read. Some stories are better than others but I enjoyed all of them and learned a few things which is always a good thing.